And the
brief flame of the lighter, which she snapped closed as she took a
strong, slow drag. Another night-shift to deal with old grannies
looking for denture cream, kids trying to lift cigarettes, drunks
picking up plastic violets for the wife. If only she didn't need to
eat, Julia concluded, maybe she wouldn't have to work in a world that
seemed more than a little unreal.
But then, that was the family legacy, wasn't it? Seeing something that
wasn't there, or worse: trying to see something that wasn't there and
almost succeeding. Find a farm out in Arizona and retire once you've
had enough of being called crazy. But then, Julia knew that there were
two kinds of people: those who couldn't live without air conditioning
and her uncle. Another run-down, fix-it-up farm in this family was out
of the question. She took another deep drag and wondered why she kept
smoking these things. They were like beer, Uncle Justin had told her:
after the War, they never went back to making them right. If only
someone would just make some real changes in the world -- how long
could it be before it was a better place to live? A better place than
this? Wasn't that what everyone wanted? If so, why did everyone
settle for what they had?
That's what her mother had done.
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